Ever since the install, my system has shown me a suspicious bug right before the Fedora splash screen loads which says PCI-BUG #81 [<some zeroes>] found, after which the system continues to boot normally. I don't know what this bug is about but I'd like to solve this problem since I suspect that its behind some problems on my system - system freezing (even the mouse) whenever I enable 3D effects (I have installed Nvidia drivers), etc. One of my friends who has the exact same laptop but with an intel processor and motherboard does not face this problem. He does not get this BUG message and his laptop does not hang even with 3D settings enabled. The rest of his hardware is exactly the same.

Can anyone help me here? Plus, I don't want to boot with the noacpi, noacip or acpi=off options as these are dirty workarounds and cause my laptop to heat. I'll wait for your response.

Another solution that that I found a couple of times implies recompiling the kernel (see post #13 in the same thread)

I did quite a bit of reading before I found the above one; however, general tendency seems to be that it does not affect the system.

PS
How can you say that your friend has the exact same laptop if the most 'crucial' elements (processor and mobo) are different?

Hi there,
Many thanks for the reply and the insight. But then, as someone who wants to learn about computers, and linux in particular, I'd like to know what the parameter acpi=nobios does. Will it ignore the hardware management settings as presented by the BIOS? Or will it bring the operating system's own settings to replace the settings offered by the BIOS? If the answer to the second question is a yes, I'd definitely trust the kernel's hardware settings more than those offered by the BIOS. If the parameter makes the OS ignore and not manage the hardware, I don't think this can be called a clean workaround.

I think it would be very interesting if you could clarify what the parameter does before I try it on my system. I'm definitely in favour of giving my OS more control over the hardware instead of the BIOS, and I have reasons for not trusting the BIOS (Aggressive spin down cycle frequencies which kills hard drives is an example of how screwed up the BIOS can get - and I'm making my acpi override that and protect my HDD.)

Wim Sturkenboom

04-29-2008 02:11 AM

It was not acpi=nobios, but pci=nobios

And I don't know the answer to your question; I suggest that you google a bit around